chumpville

Carolyn Mark chronicles life on the road with her charming and hilarious adventures of a boozy chanteuse.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Welcome to England - Here's Your Tiny Bed (Pt 1)

"Art is long and life is short and success is very far off"J. Conrad

Day 1-2 Voyage to the End of the DawnDeparted November 8 @ 8am from The Last Resort, Victoria, BC.Arrived Nov 9 @ 7pm (eight hours in THE FUTURE) at The Blue Bell Inn, Hempstead, U.K.

When was the last time you travelled 36 hours (at great expense) to get to a hundred dollar gig?I thought as much.Pussy.

I went out last night to play this new open stage(times are tough), and the guy I played withcomplained that they'd charged him for beer and I waslike "Honey, I've driven 14 hours to pay for beer andI'm a wino. You only had to come across town and yourgirl friend drove you, so shut it!"

10 hour plane ride. Diona slept like a baby. Icouldn't and woke her up in full blown petulant frenzyto help me find my book. I had looked on my own. I hadgotten all manner of people to lift up their feet andstand up to look on their seats. Nothing. And I was atthe last chapter too. Memoirs of Montparnasse. I hadto know if there was a later price to pay for youthfulhedonism.No reason. Just curious.Anyway, when I woke up Diona, she found the slendervolume in two seconds tucked into the seat ahead of meright where I'd left it.Oh.Sorry.It wasn't in there when I looked I swear!A million hours later, we arrive at Gatwick, kiss ournew best friend DJ GoodcopBadcop goodbye, get theluggage, clear customs and then...And then what?Oh yeah. This part. How the hell to get to The BlueBell Inn which is in Hempstead, the mailing address ofwhich says "Near Saffron-Walden", down a country lanein the middle of nowhere god only knows how far away?

Damn future. Sneaking up on me like that. Ok. Buses?Trains? I don't know.I hadn't slept and was not at my best.Diona suggested we rent a car and my stomach droppedto make room for my sinking heart. The whole drivingon the other side of the road thing, the roundabouts,and the law that any time you rent a car, despite theadvertised price and no matter what country you're inor for how long, it will cost you 600 dollars."No look. It's only 24 pounds a day", she says.Despite every experience I've ever had, I want toremain positive."Well, will you figure out the whole driving thing?""Of course. And it'll be cheaper than train fare fortwo everywhere."Mmm...We rent something called a Hyundai Getz from theEuropecar kiosk and go meet it in the parking lot.This is so weird. We feel like ADULTS or something.Diona figures out the left-handed stick shift and theother-footed clutch (the signals are backwards too!)and we nose out into the first of many roundabouts.For some reason, screaming like Pee Wee Herman as yougo around seems to help. Somehow we make it to the A69which is what the lady said to do. Okay. Okay. Holyshit we're in England! Driving! What a world!Drove until dark and then some, down the motorway andwere both sort of wondering how the fuck we were gonnafind the place and then I started worrying if I hadeven confirmed the show. Then I saw a sign for Norwichwhich I recognized from the second season of "I'm AlanPartridge", this culty obscure comedy show. Fuelled bythe excitement of seeing something "familiar", Isuggested that we take the exit.We stopped at the first petrol station to askdirections and holy fuck it was the EXACT RIGHT EXIT!!A narrow winding country lane in the pitch dark savefor the glow of a few tiny hamlets and then straighton through Saffron-Walden, where it was apparently dogwalking hour, and more twisty country lanes and thereit is. The Bluebell Inn. And in time for dinner even!We opened the door and the pub was just as we left it6 months ago, which made the whole adventure seem likenot such a big deal even though on the inside we feltlike mental cases.My brain rewound back to the last time we were herewhich caused me to cringe slightly. If you'll recall,I slept on the bar room floor after allegedly giving aclarinet concert and propositioning the bar tender. Ilove that they invited me back. But then I guess itwould take a maniac to even find this place.Cute show. There was a keyboard so we worked it intothe act. D. and I both wore black and white and lookedkind of like music students at a recital. That is,until I opened my filthy mouth of course. Nice crowdof about 12 people sat in brightly lit chairs. Veryattentive. Totally freaky.When it was over we sat around the wood stove with Rodand Marion the owners, their daughter, their friendsfrom out of town and the two greyhounds. Except forthe posters heralding the arrival of several otherCanadian bands, it felt like we were in an oilpainting from the nineteen hundreds. Or a ruralepisode of Coronation Street.Upstairs to the tiny beds to sleep the sleep of thepenniless international traveller."Welcome to England. Here's your tiny bed!"

Newcastle

"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile-and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together. Not necessarily To Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely."Hunter S. Thompson

You know it's gonna be a good show when the promotergoes by the name Fish Finger Frank.We pulled into town mid-afternoon, hid our stuffbehind the DJ booth in the upstairs bar and ditchedthe car. Newcastle was grey and rainy and well, justhow you'd think. We strolled and eyed fashions in thefancy stores in the main square while keeping an eyeout for the perfect place to eat. Found an Italianplace with red checkered table cloths, thin pizza,salad, wine and you could smoke at the table!When we finished it was only 6:30 so we strolled somemore and found a wine bar. Glasses of wine were twopounds forty but bottles of wine were three poundstwenty so what's a girl to do? Vocal warm-ups? Oilingand stretching? Communing with the instrument?Whatever.It was a perfectly quiet dark bar for a while untilthey blasted piercing Eurodisco through treblyspeakers to welcome the Friday After Work Crowd.Shit. I was a little drunk. I had noticed somethingfunny with the gravity when I went downstairs to thebathroom. Crazy bathroom with a motion activatedfountain.Killed the bottle, drank some water and headed back tothe club. The Telegraph. Near the station. Found FishFinger Frank pacing around wringing his handsanxiously awaiting us. There was an opening act namedMick Oliver. Good songs.We drank more wine and became his biggest fans.The bar was half full of lonely dudes. Apparently thisis my Newcastle demographic. My 'fan base' as it were.

We played to the only two people radiating any light.Two swarthy guys at the front table who seemed to beGetting It. In the break, we went to talk to them anddiscovered that they had just arrived from theDominican Republic to take a sustainable agriculturecourse (in NEWCASTLE?!), spoke barely any English andhad just randomly come to the bar not knowing theywere gonna be seeing any music.Us foreigners gotta stick together.The show was kind of a blur. My throat and fingersfelt thick and it was hard to sustain the notes. Solda couple of CDs and procured a local hostage to guideus back to Fish Finger Frank's house where there wasto be a little after bar party in our honour.The local turned out to be one of the worstdirection-givers of all time, telling us to go leftjust after passing the turn-off and various othershotgun crimes.It made me think back to when I was a kid in thepassenger seat and my mother, a nervous driver, wouldask me to check if anything was coming on my sidebefore she pulled onto the road. I used to think ifwas funny to tell her the coast was clear and thensharply inhale as she pressed the gas. Boy would sheget mad. As we drove with this guy I was silentlyapologizing to her for thousands of past crimes ofthis nature. And to Diona for making her drive. Andwell the list goes on.I was a remorseful, lonely, boozy chanteuse inNewcastle.Got to the house. Diona had been here before to scoresome hash when we played Newcastle last time withPo'Girl when it was the big show at the fancy placecrammed with fans. Of course. She had dropped a fewhints as to the condition of the house, but I payedher no heed as we had no other option.It was shambolic.Filthy, the ubiquitous really hairy cat, fureverywhere and the fireplace was actually a coalgrate! Like, there were actual bags of COAL beside thefireplace!We all huddled around on the living room floor.Fish Finger Frank, his silent wife, the bad navigator,the simpering superfan, me and Dee, possibly someoneelse.Diona started making some 'well I'm off to bed, that'sit for me' gestures but I implored her with my eyes tostay for 'just one' as they were doing this in ourhonour. I don't think she was feeling well, but that'snot really an option any more. Some travellingpeople, presumably the ones that are going to outliveme, are able to ignore any troubles the hosts havegone to and simply do what they want, oblivious to anyruffled feathers. Or maybe they don't even notice. Ormaybe it just takes a giant self-obsessed diva assholeto succeed in any way in this world. Lord knows peoplelove to be abused... Hmm I wish I was more of anasshole but I'm a sucky pack animal with wateryboundaries lacking the integrity to say it at thetime, emboldened later by the safety of being milesaway shut up in my room replaying the events in slowertime and skewing the details with perspective so thatI feel like more of a star.So we stay up with the men. They play us some tracksfrom Fish Finger Frank's band's new CD, the badnavigator sings me opera while crouching over me, wesmoke some hash, the Simpering Superfan opens thisSpecial Wine He'd Been Saving. (O.K. so I'm a TOTALasshole. A remorseful asshole in denial. The worstkind.) At some point, Frank left the room and hismates gathered round.The Bad Navigator says, "You know Frank's really asuper guy, I mean, despite the whole Ass Burgersthing..."I am taking a haul off the joint, nodding. Agreeinguntil I get to the end of the statement, I cough upthe smoke, look up and say "Ass Burgers?!", hopingit's just accent confusion (It sort of sounded likethis: "ahhz behguhs") but getting the worst mentalflashes that maybe Frank liked to have lady singersshit in hamburger buns as his promoter fee orsomething.You never know.The Bad Navigator blinks, not understanding thequestion so I say it again."Ass Burgers? Like in Ass Burgers?"Finally the shilling drops. He covers his mouth with ahand suppressing a shocked laugh. "No. It's asyndrome. A guy's name. Like Autism.A-s-b-e-r-g-e-r's."Oh. Like that book The Curious Incident of the Dog inthe Night. Right. They explained some more details,like a crippling desire for meticulous order, socialawkwardness and other stuff until someone noticed thatFrank had returned and steered the conversation inanother direction.We discovered later, looking it up in London, that oneof the things about Asberger's is that you think thateveryone's talking about you. Poor Frank. Made methink of an interview I read with Courtenay Love. Theyasked her why she was so weird that one year and shesaid bluntly, "Oh well I think is was the... uh...crack!"She went on to say that crack makes you paranoid andyou think everyone's talking about you only since itwas her, they were!I don't know. It's kind of a touchy subject for me. Ithink everyone's crazy and I'm suspicious of anysanctioned cures and the motives behind them in aworld where the word 'functional' is good and the word'shameless' is bad.Maybe I have become such a crazy loser slacker that Iam looking for excuses to absolve me from my guilt ofnot playing along or fitting in. Actually, since I'mable to 'pass' enough to travel and get gigs, not goodones mostly, I mean I usually owe a little at the end,but maybe it's the guilt of fence sitting. Like beingable to pass but not using it to succeed. Like dullingsome of your gut reactions down to even sleep afterbeing paid like a whore at the end of the night,underpaid at that, for something you (used to) love todo. All the discomfort of selling out with none of theprofit! It's like I'm a social agnostic and you knowif I were Jesus I'd hate a fence sitter more thansomeone with convictions. Luckily, it's hard topunish someone who's already in Hell. Maybe in thenext life I'll get to be a dog.

We slept until four pm the next day waiting for ournervous hosts to leave so we could use their phone andcomputer and make The Next Plan. I don't like missingthe light in a day. The evening always feels like I'mon a movie set waiting for the shoot to be over sothey can turn the lights back on. Diona is stillquite queasy and the filthy house isn't helping. Alsoit's been 24 hours since we've eaten anything. We aresharing three brain cells between us. I want to gofind C.R. Avery and go crash his gig. Diona wants togo find Charles in Ireby. So get this: Our researchinforms us that that night Charles in Ireby is puttingon the C.R. Avery show, so everyone's a winner baby!Just as we were escaping, Diona realized that the cathad pissed all over her jeans and she almost pukedinto the coal grate. Luckily she had nothing left topuke.Ended up at a falafel stand and where the vegetariansouvlaki was a pita stuffed with french fries, acouple strands of purple cabbage and drowned inmayonnaise. Blah.Many round-a-bouts later we wound our way down thethin rain-slicked inky roads to Ireby to a cute littlehall and open arms and a nice house to stay at andthey let us open the show. It was sold out and theydug us which felt good. C.R. Avery and his band werefabulous. They even got the audience on their feetDANCING at the end which takes work over here.Back at the house down the lane later, a pianoplaying party with C.R. and the boys broke out andCharles agreed to be my U.K. booking agent which isencouraging except for the having to come back toEngland part...The next day was a twelve hour drive in the rainculminating with London traffic and Diona was reallysick and puking yellow foam and unable to eatanything. Couldn't really blame her. The food was alldisgusting. So even though I was mildy terrified, toatone for and quel the disgust at my own lack ofempathy, I offered to drive so she could rest in theback seat for a while. We were in the parking lot ofthe Motostop after having spent some time pushing somemashed potatoes around on a plate near this familywho's son kept asking "Can rabbits swim? Mummy, canrabbits swim? Can rabbits swim? Can rabbits swim?" Butthey had a new baby now and were ignoring him. We leftright when I was about to snap and drown them all inthe rabbit pond for being so ugly.Okay. Get in the driver's seat on the left. Put on theseat belt no problem. Okay. No that's not the gearshift that's the door handle. Right. Um okay clutch.brakes. Nope. Other way round. Let's see. Shouldercheck. Can't see shit. It's just all red. Okay wellmaybe the windows are backwards too. Let's concentrateon this clutch situation. Backing up, backing up, notstalling, BANG!Smashed right into a mail truck, which explains whythe window was all filled up with red, and promptlyburst into tears thinking of the expense and thebruised ego of my inner man. I wanted to save the daynot ruin it.So now Diona not only has to drive, she has to consoleme too as projectile tears splash down on 'my side' ofthe dashboard. About five minutes later I can tellthat she is trying to suppress a slight smirk. Sixminutes later we are laughing our fucking heads off atthe sheer comedy of how fast the whole thing wentdown. I was seriously in the driver's seat for under 2minutes.Twelve hours later we got to London and somehow madeit to my friend Paul's place in Stoke Newington. Otherthan seeing Paul, London was so horrible this timethat I can't even bring myself to think about it letalone write it down.I think you can get the gist from a letter I sent tomy mother, and maybe like eight other people:

Cher Maman,I imagine you are wondering about the new level ofdebt currently accrued on the old Mark Family Visacard and well, I can explain.It ain't pretty and I'm not proud but here's the storyto date:Firstly, I'm in Italy now, having left the greyOrwellian misery of England that leaves one filledwith ineffectual rage, screaming at the skies likeBasil Fawlty. I can see now why you left the firstchance you were able.Yesterday was, in a word, frustrating.To bring you up to date, upon arriving at Gatwick, wepriced out the cost of taking trains for twoeverywhere and decided to rent a car. �24 pounds a dayall inclusive. All was well. Diona said she'd figureout the whole driving on the other side of the roadthing which I think I could have done but also it wasa standard. Then Diona got The New Fall Flu and was,among other things, puking yellow foam and feelingterrible so I offered to try driving so she could restand in under 5 seconds, while backing out of theparking spot, I hit a postal truck and creased thedoor (�75. I'd ticked the insurance waiver)In Newcastle, we rang the rental place to see if wecould keep said car (a Hyundai Getz, for the record)for a couple more days, figuring that to return it toGatwick and then take the train into London and thenout to Luten would cost about the same.I asked them if there was a fee to change the drop-offdestination because, hey man, I've been around, Iain't no rube and the woman said it would be �13pounds which I thought sounded too good to be true butsince I'm working on this Positive Thing now I thoughtmaybe I'd believe her.Well, she lied. It was �150 and we phoned the numberand pouted at the woman and asked for the manager butwe ain't in Canada anymore which we'd began to noticewhen we came out of my friend Paul's flat in StokeNewington earlier in the day to find the car 'clamped'(Just like on Ab Fab) with two tickets on it eventhough we had a perfectly valid guest pass displayedprominently in the window. We phoned the number andasked to speak to the manager but we ain't in Canadaany more and nothing's fair and do you think theyactually want more people in London? It's survival ofthe fittest baby, like a game of chicken, like if youcan't handle feeling this shitty all the time, wellyou're clearly not cut out to live in London so shoveoff sister!It's �115 to unclamp the car which is EXTORTION butthe plane's gonna leave and we have to return the carby 3pm or else it's another day's charge so what areyou going to do?And the tickets are �100.Oh yeah and we're exhausted of course, partially dueto my sketchy knowledge of England's geography-put1000 miles on the car between two gigs, and on top ofeverything, man is the food crappy. (What do theygotta do that to the tomatoes for?) So a thousanddollars poorer, we boarded the discount flight toItaly and I put on sunglasses, buried my nose in abook and cried hot hot tears of deep despair thinkingit's not just about the money, it's the feeling ofbeing covered in loser dust and being made to paybecause you're trying things a different way and wellmaybe this is the cost of all the joy etc.I'm thinking of you and how you'll worry about themoney and how I don't want you to because I knowyou're having some unexpected expenses now and I'mgrateful that you help me at all and I'm gonna pay itback as soon as I can by hook or by crook.Sorry about all this.love you,xooxcm